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Tag: Karlheinz Deschner

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Constantine Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 64


Editor’s note: Is this the nose of an Aryan? St. Augustine was, in the world of the ideas of the decaying Roman Empire, what Constantine was for the State. Below, an abridged translation from the opening page of Karlheinz Deschner’s chapter on Augustine in Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums:
 

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Chapter 20: The Father of the Church Augustine
(354-430)

‘Augustine is the greatest philosopher of the patristic age and the most brilliant and influential theologian of the Church, full of ardent love for God and selfless altruism, surrounded by the soft glow of infinite goodness and the most attractive affability’.

—Martin Grabmann

‘As a brilliant thinker, acute dialectician, intelligent psychologist, of a rare religious ardour, at the same time an affable man, Augustine was already during his life the great guide of the Latin Church. For the later time, his importance cannot be greater’.

—E. Hendrikx

‘The force that moves me is love’.

—Augustine

‘Hidden vengefulness, petty envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul was at once on top! One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realise, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top’.

—Friedrich Nietzsche The Antichrist § 59

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Christendom Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 63

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of
Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums:

 
Against Hellenism
An anti-Hellenistic law passed the following year sanctions for the offering of sacrifices as a crime of lese-majeste. In case incense was offered, the emperor confiscated ‘all the places that would have been hit by the smoke of the incense’ (turis vapore fumasse). If they were not owned by the person who burned it, he had to pay 25 pounds of gold, as well as the owner. The indulgent administrative chiefs were punished with 30 pounds of gold and their staff was charged the same amount. Geffcken considers this law ‘almost in the tone of a rhetorical missionary sermon’. Gerhard Rauschen speaks of the ‘funeral song of paganism’. It resulted in the prohibition of worship of the gods throughout the Empire.
In this way, many temples were victims of the Christian furore, such as that of Juno Caelestis in Carthage or that of Sarapis in Alexandria. Theodosius, who ‘eliminated the sacrilegious heretics’, as Ambrose praised him in his funeral address, transformed the temple of Aphrodite of Constantinople into a garage. He also threatened with exile or death for performing religious services of the Hellenistic superstition (gentilicia superstitio); it was forbidden to offer incense, light candles, place crowns and even private worship in the house itself. Augustine also praises this fanatic because ‘from the beginning of his government he had been tireless’, ‘helping the threatened (!) Church by very just and merciful laws against the pagans’, and because ‘he had the images of the pagan idols destroyed everywhere’.
But Theodosius repressed Hellenism even through a violent war; in circumstances that, once again, show the behaviour of Ambrose.
(Editor’s Note: Returning to my quotable quote from my previous entry, ‘Only revenge heals the wounded soul’. If whites will survive they must strike back: destroy all the Christian idols in addition to their temples. That alone would heal their psyche from suicidal Judaization: having dared to have a fucking jew as their personal lord and saviour. After three pages describing a bloody episode, Deschner continues:)
Augustine was also glad that the victor overthrew the statues of Jupiter placed in the Alps and that he gave his gold rays ‘gladly and obligingly’ to the messengers of the troops. ‘He had the images of the idols destroyed everywhere, for he had discovered that the granting of the earthly gifts also depends on the true God and not on the demons’. ‘That’s how the emperor was in peace and in war,’ says the devout Theodoret, full of joy. He always asked for God’s help and it was always granted’.

On January 17, 395, at 48 years of age, Theodosius died of dropsy. And Ambrose himself died, on April 4, 397. His remains rest today, which he had never imagined, in a coffin with those of the saints Gervase and Protase.

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Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 62

The ignorance of Aryans in general and of white nationalists in particular exasperates me. Not long ago, a Christian commenter on Occidental Dissent glorified Theodosius in the comments section of that blog. Once one becomes acquainted with the history of Christianity written by a non-Christian, unheard-of facts emerge that the typical educated Westerner knows nothing about.
Left, an idealised painting of Ambrose barring Theodosius from Milan Cathedral as, in real life, Ambrose was a non-white. After hearing about the Massacre of Thessalonica, the bishop of Milan refused to celebrate a mass in the Emperor’s presence.
Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Christianity’s Criminal History).
 

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Theodosius’ massacres
What Theodosius ‘the Great’ was capable of is a good example of what happened in the year 387 in Antioch, after a revolt of the people as a result of an increase in taxes in February. The tax was exorbitant. Death sentences were issued, and countless people, including children, were beheaded, burned or thrown to the beasts—and yet, almost a trifle compared to the bloodbath of Thessalonica.
In February of the year 390 the people of Thessalonica killed Butheric, the Gothic military commander, because of the imprisonment of a popular charioteer, who was courting Butheric’s beautiful cup washer. The pious Theodosius, one of the ‘notoriously Christian sovereigns’ of the century (Aland), immediately ordered to gather the population into the circus with the lure of a spectacle, and had them killed right there.
Bishop Theodoret describes it in poetic terms: ‘as in the harvest of the ears, they were all cut off at once’. Although Theodosius later denied it, his slaughterers put to the knife, for several hours, more than seven thousand women, men, children and the elderly. It is one of the most monstrous massacres of Antiquity, which does not prevent St. Augustine from glorifying Theodosius as the ideal image of a Christian prince. The Church granted the sovereign the nickname of ‘the Great’ and went down in history as the ‘exemplary Catholic monarch’ (Brown).

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Christendom Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 61

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
Ambrose’s struggle against Hellenism
Like many other Church fathers, Ambrose was subject to the influence of Greco-Roman philosophy, especially Plotinus. However, he speaks of it quite critically, relating it to ‘idolatry’, a special invention of Satan, and also to the ‘heretics’, especially the Arians. If this philosophy has something good it is that it comes from the ‘Holy Scriptures’, from Ezra, David, Moses, Abraham and others. It also considers all the natural sciences as an attack on the ‘Deus maiestatis’. The Hellenism is for him, as a whole, an ‘arma diaboli’, and the fight against it ‘a fight against the Empire of the devil’ (Wytzes).
The young Gratian at first had given a good treatment to the Hellenists, but he learned from his spiritual mentor ‘to feel the Christian Empire as an obligation to repress the old religion of the state’ (Caspar). This was no longer difficult, since Christianity was established and paganism was in retreat. After the visit to Rome by Gratian and his co-regent in 376, the city, still largely clinging to the old faith, experienced the destruction of a sanctuary of Mithras by the prefect Gracchus, who, pending baptism, thus demonstrated his merits.
In the summer of 382, Ambrose was in Rome, probably horrified by the many Gentiles, the ‘demented dogs’, as were called by Pope Damasus I, a Spaniard, and while he was talking about persecution, the Christian members of the Senate had to pay their official oath before the image of the goddess Victoria.
At the end of that same year, the sovereign (who would soon be assassinated) disposed, ‘evidently by the advice of Ambrose’ (Thrade), ‘with all certainty not without the influence of his paternal adviser Ambrose’ (Niederhuber), a series of peremptory anti-Hellenist edicts for the city, by virtue of which the support of the State was withdrawn from various cults and clergy, like the popular Vestals, the exemption from taxes was annulled and the ownership of the land of the temples was denied.
The monarch also ordered the removal of the statue of the goddess Victoria, a masterpiece of Tarentum taken from the enemy and also a highly venerated symbol of Roman rule. Since Victoria was one of the oldest national deities, with a cult statue in the Senate hall since the time of Augustus (only Constantius II had recently withdrawn her), most of the senators and Hellenist citizens of Rome felt offended about what was most sacred.

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Eduardo Velasco God Jesus

On Christian nationalists

Because Amazon is already printing my books, and in another account The Fair Race will even be available, I removed the ads from my books that I had on the addendum to this site. I had titled it Daybreak Press but recently I modified it to, in my mother tongue, criticise Eschatology: a cult derived from Christian Science in which I was alienated throughout my twenties.
The founder of that sect, one William Walter, had crossed by a great agony in his youth to expurgate from his mind the idea of a personal god. Even during my perdition in Walter’s sect, I had already abandoned theism, as the idea of ‘God’ for the eschatologists is similar to that of the New Age in which each individual, not only Jesus, is Vere homo, vere Deus.
Although on the Addenda I now criticise Walter’s cult, his new vision of divinity is a clear advance compared to the idea of the volcanic demon worshiped by the ancient Hebrews: an idea that whites internalized with extraordinary ferocity since Constantine and his successors, except Julian, destroyed the classical world. Thus, the beautiful gods of the Hellenes were replaced by an exceedingly proud and primitive god, in whose Talmud it is said that the best among the Goyim must be exterminated.
But the idea of the providence of the ignorant Walter was not really new. It resembles, in a way, the new understanding of God of German philosophers such as Schelling and Hegel. Thanks to their philosophers, when Hitler created National Socialism, some Germans already had not only an idea of the divinity much more mature than the tribal god of the Hebrews (and of traditionalist Americans). The Germans also had a long history of exegetes who had subjected the New Testament to the highest possible scrutiny that one could imagine.
(Reimarus, who restarted the criticism on the historicity in the gospel narratives since the subject had been suppressed when the Christians burned Porphyry’s books.)
On this site I have criticized Albert Schweitzer for having migrated, as a good neo-Christian, to Africa to help blacks after abandoning traditional Christianity. However, his book, in which he reviews the long history of German exegetes who studied the gospels, is a classic. Many, like Schweitzer himself, had no choice but to abandon traditional dogma after such an undertaking.
Culturally but not geographically, I am closer to Europe and National Socialism than to the United States. For the same reason, every time I approach the new posts of pro-white sites in America, I am astonished to see how backward they are compared, say, to Hitler’s anti-Christian table talks (whose excerpts I find myself moving to Ex Libris). Hunter Wallace of Alabama, for example, concludes his entry today with these words ‘The solution to all this is found in Jesus the Christ’.
Compare his words with what I recently said in Pilate or Jesus?: ‘You do not realise that, with that admiration [of Jesus], you, like so many white nationalists who are still clinging to their parents’ religion, are doing something harmful to the white race’. It was in that same post where I added: ‘It is this kind of thing that produces a tectonic earthquake, it opens a grand canyon so to speak, between me and the [American] nationalists’.
Years ago, it seems to me that on Radio Free Mississippi, Wallace discussed with Alex Linder the theme of Christianity throughout the podcast. But Linder is monolingual: he did not know, at least when he argued with Wallace, the Spanish texts of Evropa Soberana and Karlheinz Deschner in German that we have been translating for this site. As I have said elsewhere, the masthead of this site is Soberana’s essay; what the ten volumes of Deschner provide is a huge bibliography that validates Soberana’s claims.
I do not harbour any illusions. I know that pro-white Americans will die addicted to the Judeo-Christian drug until their race finishes dying. But perhaps my work may be of some use to those who, as Walter and I suffered while repudiating the volcanic demon, are in the process of apostasy.

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Ethnic cleansing Goths Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 60

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
The Emperor Theodosius ‘the Great’
Theodosius I (reign 379-395) found in the father of the Church, Ambrose, an energetic travelling companion. ‘There is hardly a year of his reign’, says the Protestant theologian Von Campenhausen, ‘that he does not proclaim a new law or other measures to fight against paganism [Note of the translator: Hellenism] and to suppress heresy and to favour the Catholic Church’. ‘The annihilation of those who thought differently was, from the beginning, the goal of his government, and the ecclesiastical tradition, which describes Theodosius as an indefatigable protector of Catholicism and an enemy of all heresies and paganism [Hellenism], has portrayed him with complete fidelity’.

(Above, a Nummus of Theodosius.) However, the special merit of the Catholic sovereign consisted in a new policy towards the Germans. In his reorganization of the army, seriously severed, he incorporated ‘barbarians’ (they followed a trend that existed since Constantine) even in the leadership: Franks, Alemanni, Saxons and especially Goths, and with this ‘Gothfied’ army he cleansed the Balkans of Goths, that although officially they belonged to the Empire were not citizens but servants. In his first year of reign, he thus won victories over the Goths, the Alans, and the Huns.
Theodosius, as they always say full of ‘magnanimity towards the vanquished’ (Thiess), ‘the last great protector of the Germans on the Roman imperial throne’ (von Stauffenberg), never fought battles following every rule. Following Valens’ hunting of Gothic heads, he carried out a kind of guerrilla warfare, for which he sacrificed ‘unscrupulously or intentionally’ also the Gothic troops themselves (Aubin). The same as Gratian, he sought to annihilate one after another the various groups of ‘barbarians’.
Thus, he attacked isolated Goth contingents where he thought fit, as for example in 386 a troop of Ostrogoths led by Prince Odotheus. In autumn, they had requested permission to cross the river at the mouth of the Danube, although at first Promotus, the Magister militum that ruled Thrace, denied it. However, a dark night drew them to the river to fall into the hands of the Roman army. They set out to cross it with three thousand boats—the river was full of corpses—and were immediately defeated, while the women and children were left in captivity. However, surely the emperor’s Goth policy would have been different if he had had enough strength.
Theodosius hurried to celebrate the feat and on October 12, with his chariot drawn by elephants (a gift of the Persian king), entered triumphantly in Constantinople, where he had a commemorative column of 40 meters high in memory of this and other massacres of ‘barbarians’. Some years later, his general Stilicho caused a serious setback to another group of Goths. Bishop Theodoret informs with joy about ‘killings’ with ‘many thousands’ of ‘barbarians’ massacred. On the other hand, the prisoners of such operations flooded the slave markets throughout the East.
And from then on, thanks to the ‘merits’ of Theodosius, in all the battles of the invasion of the barbarians there are Germans fighting on both sides.

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Goths Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 59

Editors’ Note: Keep in mind the fact that Ambrose was non-white, and that many of the Goths—pure Aryans—were converts from Germanic paganism to Arian Christianity.
 
Saint Ambrose drives the annihilation of the Goths, 2
The holy bishop constantly incites against the Goths, conjures the world not to let down the guard, and for him ‘practically any means is not only justified but also necessary’ (K.P. Schneider).
Ambrose had sent the holy emperor his pastoral work De fide, written during the conflict with the Goths, to the battlefield of Illyria, knowing that a victory should provide ‘more faith in the emperor of the courage of the soldiers’ (fide magis imperatoris quam virtute militum), with which he again incites against the Arians, who in reality are only human beings in their outward appearance, because in their interior they are ferocious animals. Although he prophesies the triumph, he is sure of victory ‘as a testimony of the true faith’.
The Arians, who ‘arrogated to themselves the name of Christians’ and yet ‘tried to wound with deadly weapons’ the Catholics, seemed, according to Ambrose, like the Jews, although they were worse, and also like the pagans, although in fact they were even worse: more like the antichrist and the devil himself. They had ‘gathered the poison of all heresies’,’ they were human beings only in their external aspect, but inside they were full of the rage of animals’.

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Ancient Rome Christendom Goths Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 58

Editors’ Note: Always keep in mind the fact
that Ambrose was non-white.


Saint Ambrose drives the annihilation of the Goths, 1
The Goths saw in their bishop Ulfilas, born about 311 of Gothic parents of Cappadocian descent, a ‘sacrosanct man’. He would write on his deathbed: ‘I, Ulfilas, bishop and confessor’, an honorary title that is related to the persecution of the Christian Goths, probably in 348. However, like him, only in Arianism did he see the una sancta; in all others, Christians antichrists, in their churches he saw ‘synagogues of the devil’ and especially in Catholicism a ‘lost theory of evil spirits’. Bishop Ambrose, for his part, believed that the fact that they did not accept salvation by the cross but only in imitation of Christ, whatever they understood by it, constituted ‘The most outstanding characteristic of Gothic Arianism’ (Giesecke). [1]
Even when commenting on the Gospel, Ambrose could quote praisefully the words of Paul, an even greater abominator: ‘Love is patient, it is kind, it does not show zeal, it does not boast’. He could let the imagination run: ‘But would not it be wonderful to offer the other cheek to the one who hits you?’ However, in reality Ambrose did not offer one cheek or the other, as he incited with especially Christian (and Pauline) consideration: ‘Is it not achieved with patience to return the blows twice [!] to the one who hits, in the form of the pain of the repentance?’ [2]
About our saint it is significant that he often speaks of the love of his neighbour and that he even approaches the subject as a whole in his monograph, De officiis ministrorum, but apparently only alludes to the love of enemies. For him—the same for Augustine and the whole Church—it was not useful, but only a sign of the greater perfection of the New Testament against the Old. However, this does not imply any binding requirement for Ambrose. What he rather does is ‘curiously not to reject anywhere war, categorically, as illicit’ (K.P. Schneider). On the contrary! The idea of a ‘justified war’ is constantly and ‘indirectly’ sketched by him. [3]
And not only indirectly, because while in the East the philosopher and educator of Princes, Themistius, who stood by several emperors and never adhered to Christianity, tried to mediate between the ecclesiastical parties and also between pagans and Christians (and, at the same time, vigorously supported the policy of a peaceful compromise between the Goths and Valens), St. Ambrose did just the opposite. As soon as he could, he sent his 19-year-old protégé Gratian in the name of Jesus against the Goths, the pagans, the ‘heretics’, the ‘barbarians’. [4]
The bishop did not cease to show passion. ‘There is no certainty from where they will attack the faith’, he exclaimed, angered before the emperor.

Raise up, O Lord, and unfold your standard! This time it is not the military eagles that lead the army and it is not the flight of the birds that directs it; it is your name. Jesus is the one who is cheered and it is your cross that goes before them… You have always defended it against the barbarian enemy; now take revenge!

Although he should not take revenge precisely in the name of Jesus! However, Ambrose took as a reference—as the clergy have done in all wars to date—the Old Testament: where Abraham, with a few men, annihilated numerous enemies; where Joshua triumphed over Jericho.
The Goths are for the saint the Gog people (‘Gog iste Gothus est’), whose annihilation predicts the prophet, de quo promittitur nobis futura victoria: a people that Yahweh, in his lapidary style, wants to ‘give to devour’ to raptors and other animals, and also to their own: ‘And you must eat the fat until you are fed up and drink blood until you get drunk of the victim I sacrifice for you’. According to Ambrose, for whom ‘Germanic’ and ‘Arian’ (or ‘Roman’ and ‘Catholic’) were almost equivalent terms, to defeat the Goths one thing is needed: true faith! This, in spite of the fact that the emperor of the East, Valens, was Arian! But the bishop conveniently ignored these facts. Faith in God could not be separated from fidelity to the Empire. ‘Where fidelity to God is lost, the Roman State is also broken’. Where the ‘heretics’ appeared, they were followed by the ‘barbarians.’ [5]
Of course, the military aspect was accompanied by an aspect of ecclesiastical politics. However, in occupied Illyria, that is, near northern Italy and Milan, in addition to the war with the outside adversary, the internal enemy—the disputes with the Arians—also wreaked havoc. Secundianus resided in Singidunum as bishop, Palladio in Ratiaria, Julian Valens in Poetovium, Auxentius in Durostorum, but Ulfilas also lived there, who displayed his activity mainly in the eastern provinces of the Danube. Ambrose incited the emperor against these influential Christians, especially when the Illyrian Arians made propaganda also in Milan and other cities in northern Italy, and the entry of Goths gave new impulses to the ‘heresy’. Thus, this Catholic did not cease to invoke the religious situation and the performance of the Arians as a danger to the Empire and to military security, which would provide the ‘heretical’ subjects with a protection against the Goths, their fellow believers, much smaller than the Orthodox. [6]
Nevertheless, it is evident that the military aspect was now more important for Ambrose than the religious one that he highlights, insofar as his diocese was not far from the Goths and in Roman Christianity, according to an ancient tradition, the same distinction was done among Romans and ‘barbarians’ as between human beings and animals. The danger arose from the enemies of the country. Thus, the religious zeal of the bishop is now anticipated by the national zeal. Ambrose especially emphasised the propensity to a vice of the ‘barbarians’, their depravity ‘worse than death’.
For him, the unquestioning patriot, the enemy is also any ‘stranger’, an ‘alien’ almost equivalent to infidel. To the Goths and the like (Gothi et diversarum nationum viri) he calls ‘people who once dwelt in wagons’, beings more fearsome than the gentiles (gentes). Thus, he does not fight the infidel Romans; what he does rather is to place the army of the pagans on his side and incite it against the ‘barbarians’, and to win over the emperor with pretexts of religious motives, while seeking the predominance of ‘Roman culture’, which he himself provides protection and a very prestigious life. [7]
 
________________
Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] Jord. of orig. act Get 25. Soz. e.h. 2.6. Philostorg. e.h. 2.5. Basil ep. 164.2. Lex dtv Antike, Religion 1176. Seeck, Untergang V 90. K.-D. Schmidt, Die Bekehrung 216 f, 231 f, 236 f, 257 (here citation). Giesecke, Die Ostgermanen 6 f, 16 f, 44, 69. Thompson, Christianity 69 f. K. K. Klein, Gotenprimas Wulfila 84 f, especially 98 f. Previté-orton, The shorter 56. Claude, Die Westgoten 11 f, 26 f. Aland, Glaubenswechsel 58. Klein, Constantius II, 253 f.
[2] Ambros. Lukaskommentar 5,73 f.
[3] Schneider, Liebesgebot 27 f, 56.
[4] Pauly V 677 f. Straub, Regeneratio 203 f. Wolfram, Gotische Studien 13.
[5] Ambr. of fide ad Grat. 2,16,130; 2.16, 139 f; 3,16,138 f. Ez. 38 f, especially 38.4; 39.4; 39.19. Ambr. ep. 10.9; 25 f. of off. 1.35175 f. from Tob. 15.51. On the concept of ‘barbarians’, cf. for example Wemer, Barbarus 401 f. Jüthner 103 f. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 37 f, 46 f. The same, Lateinische Kirchenväter 88 f. Beumann, Zur Entwickiung 219 f. Stratmann III 72. Christ, Römer 273 f. Homus 169. Pavan, Gothic Politics 70 f, especially 76 f. Schneider, Liebesgebot 49 f. Chadwick, Die Kirche 174. Haendier, Von Tertullian 102.
[6] Ambros. of fide 2.16, 139 f. Sulp. Sev. Vit. Mart. 6.4. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 9 f, 18 f, 37 f. Schneider, Liebesgebot 45 f. Gottiieb, Ambrosius 21 f, 83 f.
[7] Ambros. ep. 19.7 f; 20.12; 20.20. of off. 2,136; 3.84. de fide 2,16. Prudent. c. Symm. 2,816 f. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 48 f. Schneider, Liebesgebot 49 f. Straub, Regeneratio 251. Haendier, Von Tertullian 102.

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Ancient Rome Christendom Goths Huns Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 57

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
The Goths—Gutans or Gut-þiuda in their language—were the main people of the East Germans. Coming from Sweden, Gotland, Östergötland or Västergötland, they settled on the lower Vistula in the ‘transition period’, about the year 150 on the Black Sea. In the middle of the 1st century they split into Eastern and Western Goths (Ostrogoths, of austro, ‘bright’, and Visigoths, from wisi, ‘Good’), although they continued to be considered as a single people and usually called themselves only Goths. The Ostrogoths settled between the Don and the Dnieper (in present-day Ukraine), and the Visigoths between it and the Danube, from where they spread to the Balkans and Asia Minor, historians citing here generally the year 264. Dacia and Moesia (approximately the current Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia) were constantly under their pressure. In the year 269 Emperor Claudius II defeated them, Constantine often fought against them, and in 375 both towns (except the Catholic Crimean Goths, who remained there until the sixteenth century) were expelled by the Huns, who were advancing towards West. This tribe of nomads from the interior of Asia, were defeated and expelled in turn by the Chinese and only lived on horseback—’animals of two legs’ as Ammianus wrote—, advancing irresistibly from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea, extending the Russian plain and conquering a gigantic empire. Around 360 they had crossed the Don and reached Hungary by 430. However, allied with the Visigoths, the imperial general Flavius Aetius—who had sought and found protection among the Huns in the past—, defeated them in 451 in Gaul, in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. A few years later their king died, and more quickly than they had arrived, they largely withdrew towards Asia, in the Pontic steppes, the North Caucasus and the Sea of Azov. They were disbanded into several tribes and were henceforth known under the new name of Bulgarians.[1]
The Goths of the Balkans, the Lower Danube and the shores of the Black Sea were soon ‘converted’, the first among the Germans. This began in the 3rd century through contacts with the Romans and with captives. In the 4th century there was a notable increase of Christians among the Visigoths. In the year 325 the bishopric of Gomia already exists, under the orthodox bishop Theophilus; one of the participants in the Council of Nicaea. In 348 there is a persecution of Christians and in 369 a second one, which lasts three years. However, soon after most of the Visigoths are Christians. The Ostrogoths, on the other hand, if we give credence to Augustine, when penetrating Italy in 405 under King Radagaisus were still pagans; while in 488, when they invaded Italy with Theodoric, they were already Christians.[2]
The persecution of 348, led by a ‘judge of the Goths, without religion and profaner of God’, that is, a pagan, led to the expulsion of Ulfilas, the author of the Gothic Bible, consecrated around 341 by Eusebius of Nicomedia as ‘bishop of Christians in the land of the Goths’. With him a group of his followers fled, to whom Emperor Constantius II settled south of the Danube, in the province of the Lower Moesia, where their descendants lived for two centuries.[3]
The second persecution against the Christians under the Visigoths (in 369-372) was led by the prince Athanaric. It is perfectly understandable that already the ancient authors were fascinated with a man who, for example, refused to address Emperor Valens with the treatment of Basileus, arguing that he preferred the title of judge, which embodies wisdom, while the king only the power. The second persecution was not solely due to questions of faith. It was mainly an anti-Roman reaction and was closely related to the war between Goths and Romans between 367 and 369, although evidently also with the struggle for power between the princes Athanaric and Fritigern, the latter representing a policy favourable to the Romans and the Christians.[4]
After a meticulous preparation, Valens crossed the Danube in the year 367 and resumed a fight against the Goths that Constantine had already initiated, ending it in 332 by means of a formal treaty of peace with the Visigoths. Valens, without the warrior carving of the ‘great emperor’, ravaged the country, went hunting the heads of an enemy in disarray, but failed to reach the bulk of their opponents, as Athanaric always managed with great skill to flee to the Carpathians. And although in 369 he stopped with a part of his people and was defeated, it was so undecided that Valens had to accept his refusal to step on the Roman ground and had to spend a whole September day negotiating in a boat anchored in the river. Finally, the Gothic prince had free hands to dominate the adversaries in his own town, which led to three years of persecution.[5]
The reign of Athanaric did not tremble until the Huns overwhelmed the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, at which time Athanaric and Fritigern, in spite of their enmity, fought side by side against the powerful invaders, and apparently the Ostrogothic king Ermanaric committed suicide in desperation. One part of his people were subjugated while the other crossed the Dnieper and fled towards the Visigoths. However, the defence sank before the hurricane of the Huns. With Athanaric they fled again to the impassable Carpathians. (In 1857 the workers who built a road there found, near a ruined fortress in Pietroasele, the Visigoth ‘treasure of the crown’. In a choker the following runic inscription appeared: utani othal ik im hailag: that is, a treasure of the Goths, I am invulnerable.) Defeated again, between forty and seventy thousand Visigoths fled to the south and asked in 376 Emperor Valens to admit them into the Roman Empire.[6]
While Athanaric left Gut-þiuda, the country of the Goths, and settled in the territories that would later be Transylvania, Valens authorised the immigration of the great mass of the Goths ruled by Fritigern as foederati; that is, colonists with the obligation to go to the army when they were needed: an ancient method of obtaining peasants, but above all soldiers. In the autumn of 376 they crossed the river, an event of great historical significance, probably by Durostorum (Silistra): a long row of chariots, often carrying the ancient pagan idols but also with some bishop among them, a Christian priest. And Fritigern, who with many of his own had become Arian in 369, promised Valens the ‘conversion’ of the part of his people that was still pagan, something that pleased the ears of the fanatical ‘heretic’, but that for the Goths was more a question of opportunism: misery and the Huns on the one hand and the attractive Roman Empire on the other. However, their exploiters and their officials, the monopolists of food and hunger caused that not a few Goths, even some bosses, sell as slaves their own wives and children, even in exchange for dog meat, a business quite common on the Danube. The thrust of the new ‘barbarians’, Visigoths, Taifals, Alans, and Huns on the open border pushed the newcomers, who occupied all of Thrace, to rebel and march on Constantinople, joining them bands of Huns, Alans and also slaves, peasants and workers of the mines of the country.[7]
 
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Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] Plin. nat hist 37, 35; 4.28. Tac. Germ. c 44. Socr. 6.34. Ammian 31.2.1 f; 31.3 f. Philostorg. 9.17. Stein, Vom römischen 289 f. Hauptmann 115 f. Schmidt, Ostgermanen 195, 201, 243. K.-D. Schmidt, Die Bekehrung 205 f, 215, 316 f. Capelle 185 f. Historically, Weibull (Die Auswanderung der Goten aus Schweden, 1958) is of special importance. Ferdinandy 186 f. Vemadsky 258 f. Dannenbauer, Entstehung 110 f, 193 f. Conrad, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte 77. Maier, Die Verwandiung 109 f, 130. A. v. Müller, Geschichte unter useren Füssen 114 f. Rice 149. Schwartz, Goten 13 f, 142 f. Bullough, Italien 167. Wagner, getica 214. Claude, Westgoten 7. Stockmeier, Bemerkungen zur Christianisierung 316 f.
[2] Mansi Collect. Consil. II 214. Schmidt, Die Niedergang Roms 427 f. Aland, Glaubenwechsel 58 f. Stockmeier, Bemerkungen zur Christianisierung 315 f. Apparently, the first missionary of the Visigoths was one Eutyches, ibid.
[3] Jord. Get 267 (MG Auct., Ant. V 1,127). Lex dtv Antike, Religion H 311 f. Thompson, The Visigoths 94 f. Fridh, 130 f. Wolfram, Gotische Studien lis. Schäferdiek, Wulfila 107 f, especially 117.
[4] Ammian. 27.5.9. The sources in Jones, Prosography 120 f. Lex dtv Antike, Geschichte 1155. K. K. Klein Frithigem 34 f. Aland, Glaubenswechsel 59. Wolfram, Gotische Studien 2 f, 13. Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte II / l, 235.
[5] Ammian. 31,4,13. K. K. Klein Frithigem 38 f. Wolfram, Gotische Studien 4.9 f.
[6] Ammian. 31.3,4. Socr. e.h. 4.33 f. Soz. 6.37. According to Dudden 1165 they were ‘nearly a million persons of both sexes’. Giesecke, Die Ostgermanen 62 f. Schmidt, Die Bekehrung 223 f. Capelle 185 f. Thompson, Attila 23. Ensslin, Einbruch 101. Aland, Glaubenswechsel 60. Altheim, Hunnen I 351. Dannenbauer, Entstehung I 195. A. v. Müller, Geschichte unter unseren Füssen 115. Maier, Verwandiung 110.
[7] Eunap. fr. 42 f; 55. Ammian. 26, 10, 3; 27.4; 31.3 f. Zos. 4.10 f. Socr. e.h. 4.33 f. Soz. 6.37 f. Orog 7.32 f. Seeck, Untergang V 93 f, 101 f. Schwartz, Zur Geschichte des Athanasius 370. Delbrück, Kriegskunst II 280. Stein, Vom römischen 286 f. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 37 f. Schmidt, Die Bekehrung 242 f. The same, Die Ostgermanen 233. Giesecke, Die Ostgermanen 69 f. Capelle 172 f. Baetke, Die Aumahme17. Komemann, Weltgeschichte II, 352. The same, Römische Geschichte II 418 f. Ostrogorsky, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates 43. Ensslin, Einbruch 100 f. Vogt, Der Niedergang Roms 310 f, 428. Dannenbauer, Entstehung 1195. Maier, Verwandiung 110. Claude, Westgoten 14 f, 26 f. Nehisen 161. Aland, Glaubenswechsel, 59 f. Wolfram, Gotische Studien 10.

Categories
Catholic Church Christendom Goths Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 56

Below, an abridged translation from the first volume of Karlheinz Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (Criminal History of Christianity). For a comprehensive text that explains the absolute need to destroy Judeo-Christianity, see here. In a nutshell, any white person who worships the god of the Jews is, ultimately, ethnosuicidal.

 
The Ambrosian policy: archetype for the Church to the present
The same as Athanasius, Ambrose (in his post of 374-397)—according to Augustine’s testimony, ‘the best and most renowned bishop of Milan’—was not so much a theologian as a politician of the Church: equally inflexible and intolerant, although not so direct; more versed and ductile and acquainted with power since birth. His methods, more than those of Athanasius, remain to date an example for ecclesiastical politics.[1]
The agents of the saint are among the highest officials of the Empire. He acts skilfully from the background and prefers to let be that the ‘community’ does things, which he fanaticised with so much virtuosity that even the military proclamations directed against it fail.
Son of the prefect of Gaul, Ambrose was born about 333 or 339 in Trier. Orphaned at an early age he grew up, with two brothers, under the tutelage of Roman aristocrats. Having studied rhetoric and law he was appointed, around 370, administrator (consularis Liguriae et Aemiliae) in Milan. On December 7, 374 he would be consecrated bishop, barely eight days after his baptism and without even having the Christian knowledge of an educated layman.
Milan (Mediolanum), founded by the Gauls and a remarkable knot of communications, especially with important roads that lead to the alpine passes, was in the 4th century the capital of Italy and increasingly the imperial residence. Valentinian II sought to stay there as long as possible; Gratian still more, and Theodosius I remained there from 388 to 391, and also after his victory over Eugene (394).

Roman columns in front of basilica di San Lorenzo
in what remains of Mediolanum, the ancient Milan.

Sometimes Bishop Ambrose saw the sovereigns daily. Since when Valentinian II was proclaimed Augustus (375) he was barely five years old, his tutor and half-brother Gratian had just turned sixteen and the Spanish Theodosius was at least a very determined Catholic, the illustrious disciple of Jesus could handle perfectly their majesties. Valentinian I died a few years after Ambrose’s inauguration. His son Gratian (375-383), of just sixteen years of age, succeeded him on the throne.
The emperor, blond, beautiful and athletic had no interest in politics. ‘I have never learned what it means to govern and be governed’ (Eunapius). He was a passionate runner, javelin thrower, fighter, rider, but what he liked most was killing animals. Neglecting the affairs of state, every day he killed countless of them, with an almost ‘supernatural’ ability, even lions, with a single arrow. In any case, he also prayed every day and was ‘pious and clean of hearing’, as Ambrose affirmed so that he would soon deliver biting hints: ‘His virtues would have been complete had he also learned the art of politics’ (Epit. de Caesaribus).[2]
However, this art was practiced by Ambrose for him. Not only did he personally guide the young sovereign, effectively since 378: he also influenced his government measures. At that time the sovereign had promulgated, by an edict, precisely tolerance towards all confessions, except a few extremist sects. However, Ambrose, who four years before was still unbaptized, hastened to write a statement, De fide ad Gratianum Augustum, which he quickly understood.
And as soon as Gratian himself arrived at the end of July 379 in Milan, neutral as he was from the point of view of religious policy, he annulled on August 3, after an interview with Ambrose, the edict of tolerance promulgated the year before. He decided then that only would be considered ‘Catholic’ what his father and he in numerous decrees had ordered eternal, but that ‘all heresies’ should ‘be muted for eternity’. He thus prohibited the religious services of the other confessions. Year after year, except for 380, he issued anti-heretic decrees, ordering the confiscation of meeting places, houses and churches; he dictated exiles and, as a fairly new means of religious oppression, repealed the right to make wills. He was also the first of the Christian emperors who got rid of the title of Pontifex Maximus (that the Roman monarchs used since Augustus), or rather, he refused to accept it, although the year is still the subject of discussions. The military under Sapor was ordered to ‘expel from religious facilities the Arian blasphemy as if they were wild animals and return them to the true shepherds and flocks of God’ (Theodoret). Tolerance towards paganism, which was common among his predecessors, also soon disappeared. In fact, his father still allowed the reparation of damaged temples, making the government pay the expenses. In 381, Gratian moved to northern Italy. In 382 he attacked the pagan cult of Rome, most probably advised by Ambrose; although sanitation of the State coffers may also have played an important role. He also persecuted the Marcionists and, like his father, the Manichaeans and the Donatists: whose communities in Rome had been dissolved without further ado, at the request of Pope Siricius (383-399), with state aid.[3]
Valentinian II (375-392), much younger still, had a remarkable influence on the saint. He habitually used him against the Senate of Rome, mostly pagan, and against the entire Council of the Crown. And the last Westerner on the throne of the East, the independent Theodosius (379-395), dictated in almost every year of his government laws against pagans or ‘heretics’. However, according to Father Stratmann, he was more tolerant than the bishop of the court, who encouraged him to take stricter measures on all sides against the pagans, the ‘heretics’, the Jews, and the extreme enemies of the Empire. The reason: ‘It is no longer our old life that we continue to live but the life of Christ, the life of maximum innocence, the life of divine simplicity, the life of all virtues’ (Ambrose).[4]
The way in which Ambrose lived the life of Christ, the life of maximum innocence, of divine simplicity and of all the virtues, manifests itself in multiple ways—for example, in his behaviour against the Goths. We will deal with them because the Goths played a very important role in the history of Europe, especially between the 5th and 6th centuries. The sources are better in this case than in the other tribes of eastern Germans, and richer is the historiography on them.[5]
 
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Note of the translator: The footnotes still lack the general bibliography, which will be ready as I finish the abridgement of this first volume.
[1] August. conf. 5,13.
[2] Eunap. Excerpt. de Sent. 48. Auson. Grat. Act 64 f. Ammian. 27,6,15; 31,10,18 f. Soz. 7,25,11. Vict. Epit. de Caesaribus 47,5 f. Seeck, Untergang V 165. Dudden I 217 f.
[3] Ammian 30,9,5. Theodor. e.h. 4.24.2 f; 5.2; 5.21.3 f. Socr. 5.2; Cod. Theod. 13,1,11; 16.5.4 f. Cod. Just. 1,5,2. Soz. 7,1,3. Ambros. ep. 1 f; 7 f. Auson. Grat. Act. 14.63. Epistula Gratiani imperat. (CSEL 79.3 f). Zos. 4,36,5. Rauschen 47.49 f. RAC II 1228 f. Kraft, Kirchenväter Lexikon 27. Seeck, Regesten 252. The same, Untergang V 104 f, 137. Sesan 60 f. Stein, Vom römischen 304 f. Heering I 60 f. Dudden I 191 f. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 15, 36, 40 f. Alföldi, A Festival. According to this author, Gratian abandoned the title of Pontifex Maximus at the beginning of 379, p. 36. Kornemann, Römische Geschichte II 420. Ensslin, Die Religionspolitik 8 f. Lorenz 38. Diesner, Kirche und Staat 23. Maier, Verwandlung 53. Hornus 168 f. Widmann 59. Grasmück 131 f, 151 f. Lippold, Theodosius 16, 34 f. Kupisch I 91. Schneider, Liebesgebot 46. Aland, Von Jesus bis Justinian 224. Heinzberger 12, 227 Notes 37; here the corresponding bibliography. Thraede 95. Grant, Christen 177. – Chronology, as so often happens, is still subject to controversy. G. Gottlieb, who is not followed here, in his work of opposition to chair in Heidelberg fixed for the writing of the first part of ‘de fide’ not the 378 (or 379), that is, not as was done until the date immediately before (or shortly after) the battle of Adrianople, but a year later. Cf. G. Gottlieb, Ambrosius von Mailand und Kaiser Gratian, Zusammenfassung 83 f. G. discusses even any influence of Ambrose on Gratian’s legislation on matters of the Church and faith, 51 f, or at least explains that such influence ‘cannot be seen anywhere’ (87). Cf. in this regard also Gottlieb, Gratianus RAC VII 718 f, especially 723 f.
[4] Ambros. Über die Flucht vor der Welt 44. Heilmann, Texte II 396. Stein, Vom römischen 296 F. Stratmann III 76. V. Campenhausen, Ambrosius 166. Bloch 197. Aland, Von Jesus bis Justinian 225. Rubin I 27 speaks precisely of the ‘submission’ of Theodosius to Ambrose.
[5] Cf. recently Strzelczyck 1 f.